The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Computer users often wish to receive recommendations for certain goods, services or other items, such as restaurants. However, most approaches for recommending items include requiring the user to answer a number of questions related to the item for which the user seeks a recommendation. For example, a user may search for a restaurant by first specifying the region in which the search should be located, the type of cuisine that interests the user, and the amount of money the user is willing to spend, and sometimes the planned date and time of a meal. Recommendations are provided only after this data is received and used to select matching restaurants, thus requiring the user to exert effort and to explicitly provide information before receiving recommendations. Approaches that reduce user burden and that improve computing speed, efficiency and utility during the recommendation process are needed.